Boot Camp
by Military Mechanic
Summary: We all have them. OTP's. This happen to be mine and, inside, you will find fifty drabbles and one-shots of varying lengths all about them. Based on a list found in the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenge; the OTP Boot Camp Challenge.
1. Acrid

A/N: Yep. I'm on a roll with this pairing, and this forum. I just absolutely love it! You all should totally go there. To the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenge forum, that is.

Below, we have the first part in a fifty prompt series. Some may link back to others, but most will be unrelated. All for my OTP - Draco/Neville

* * *

It should be good. The pudding, that is. In fact, it should be _more_ than good. It should be wonderful, fantastic, mind-blowing. It should be _magical_, as over-used of a word as that was here, at Hogwarts.

Should be, but isn't.

Draco's face twists into something more then irritated but less than annoyed. His steel-blue eyes narrow, looking down at his plate with nothing short of condescendance. And isn't that just great? Now, he is gloating over being better than a food item.

This is really beginning to mess with his head, he decides, prodding the mass of bread and raisins with the prongs of his fork. It gives, and a trickle of sweetened cream bubbles out of the holes he leaves behind.

Just like bread pudding should. Better even, because this pudding is made here, at Hogwarts, where everything is just _fabulous_. Sarcasm, m'dears, sarcasm.

"Hey, Draco?" asks Goyle, from the blond's side. "Are you okay?"

Draco starts, and glances over at the larger boy. There's a slight layer of concern in Goyle's dark eyes, which the Malfoy heir does his best to brush aside. He shifts, straightening his shoulders out of the brooding hunch they had fallen into, and gives a curt nod. "Of course. Perfectly fine."

And he is, because it's just pudding. He can deal with a little bread pudding, can't he? Of course he can. He's Draco - and with that thought in mind, he uses his fork to cut off a piece of the pudding and pops it into his mouth. At first, it tastes sweet and doughy. Like a piece of cloud that has been pulled out of the skies, just for him. Then Draco's gaze wanders - over and over and across the hall, to a table filled with reds and golds, where it lands on an awkward looking boy sitting off on his own.

Like magic, the pudding turns to ash in his mouth.


	2. Agitation

A/N: Huh. These are turning out way shorter than originally planned, but whatever. It works. Enjoy.

* * *

He can't clear his mind.

No matter how hard he tries, Neville just cannot get his mind to go blank. It isn't something that usually bothers him, or gives him any amount of trouble. After all, he's had a lot of practice with it growing up - from the lessons on etiquette that he blocked out, to the scornful comments that his gran threw his way.

But it won't work. Not today.

Everything that has in the past, counting and drifting and focusing on a crack in the wall, it all just washes over him, leaving behind a thick coat of exhaustion. Bringing annoyance, anger, and seldom felt rage with it. Taking away his peace, his comfort, and the one thought that everything will be fine, that it's just a phase, that he won't dissapoint his gran in this department too.

His mind spins and spins and spins, and then the door to detention finally swings open and it comes to a complete stop.

"What are _you_ doing here, Longbottom? Manage to blow up your cauldron _again_?" jibes Draco, raising one slender eyebrow at the lanky teen across from him.

Neville smacks his lips together and shrugs, cheeks suddenly burning. He forces himself to turn away from his apparant detention partner and look at his potions homework instead - and, wow, Fate is really taunting him, isn't it? In front of him, the words swim across the paper, and he's very aware of the fact that Draco takes a seat right beside him.

He forces himself not to look. To clear his mind and focus on his essay. To go back to the way he used to be, when he was afraid of the Slytherin sitting next to him.

But his mind won't turn off, and it won't let go of the sight of those steel-blue eyes.


	3. Breathless

__A/N: A little bit more length with this one, but not by much. Still, I'm actually fairly happy here.

* * *

_Do it_, his mind tells him, _do it now_.

Draco has a hard time telling it no, but he does, even if it isn't as firm as he would have liked. He can't do _it_, not now, in the middle of class. In the middle of the school year. In the middle of war.

_Later_, he chides himself,_ maybe later._

-x-x-x-x-

_Take your chance_, orders his mind_, while no one is looking_.

Neville thinks that sounds like a very good idea. Still, he doesn't move. Just sits at his desk and continues to listen to Binns drawl on about the Mermaid Rebellion, back in 1374. The ghost-like teachers voice is much more calming than the one in his mind, which urges him on with fierocity and hunger.

_No,_ he states firmly,_ not today._

-x-x-x-x-

_Stop waiting_, his mind tells him,_ before it's too late_.

That makes sense, decides Draco, but he doesn't move. Just lets the other sixth year students mill past him, as they twitter on about mundane things, like school and lessons and their _future. _His forearm starts to burn. He lets Neville walk past.

_It already is, _he chides himself_, I waited too long_.

-x-x-x-x-

_He's right there_, says his mind,_ and so is everyone else_.

But they aren't looking at Draco, Neville realizes, all too focused on Harry and Hermione and Ron; on the teachers; the aurors; the famous ones. Draco is just standing there, looking so very lost, and so very alone, and Neville know that this is it.

This time, he listens to his mind.

Crosses the rubble filled cleared.

Steps over a fallen witch - and he'll apologize to her family later, for not pausing then to pay his respects, and make up an extra bouquet for her grave.

Meets Draco, and the blond is so confused looking when he turns those slate-blue eyes on Neville. Like he isn't sure what to do with himself any more. So Neville gives him something to do.

_This is right_, he decides, when his lips finally meet Draco's in a breathless kiss, _this is so very right._


	4. Battered

A/N: I think this one's the longest so far. xD It was one of the most fun to write, too! Alas, I still have no reviews. Is this pairing really that unpopular?

* * *

When Draco stumbles across Neville, it's almost eight o'clock at night, on a Thursday, in the middle of winter. By any rights, all Gryffindor's should have been in bed and fast asleep, safe from being caught out of bounds by a teacher. Not barricaded in one of the bathroom stalls on the fourth floor - which was exactly where he is right now.

At least, Draco thinks it's Neville. No one else has a toad loyal enough to sit on the sink directly across from a closed stall. Or a toad at all, for that matter.

"Longbottom?" he drawls, rapping his knuckles against the closed stall. Purely because he wants to be able to rat on the boy later, of course, because it's the only closed stall in the entire room.

There's no answer. Just the sound of too-loud breathing that echoes off of the porcelain walls.

Slightly concerning actually, because Neville always answers. Doesn't matter who's speaking to him or poking fun at him, he always answers. He's naive like that, Draco knows, even though he's already in Third Year.

Slightly irritated at being ignored, and maybe a touch set off, he raps his knuckles on the stall again. "Longbottom?"

Again, no verbal answer. There's a shuffling sound though, like robes being moved, and a slight thud as something bumps into the wall.

"I know you're in there, Longbottom." snaps Draco, and why hasn't he just left yet? The boy isn't even in Slytherin, is far from his friend, but hadn't he gotten Draco that book on Herbology last month?

"Go 'way..." mutters Neville, and his voice is muffled, words slurred.

It sets all sorts of alarms off in the blond's mind and, suddenly, he's using his wand to force the door open and flicking on the lights at the same time. And then he's frozen because, while he didn't know what to expect, it certainly isn't _this_.

Neville's sprawled on the floor, back and shoulders leaning against the wall; his hair is sopping and dripping down onto his face, his shoulders, his back; robes are torn and disheveled. There's blood too, smeared across his chin and mouth, dripping down from a crooked nose, covering the left eye, which is painted in bold shades of blue and purple and ringed in black. He looks more than battered and just shy of broken.

Draco's mouth moves but he isn't aware of anything coming out. Something must though, because Neville shifts and looks at him, eyes not really focused.

"Dr'co?" he manages to ask, and then Neville finds himself hauled to his feet by magic, floating in air and no longer hurting - and, yes, Draco is taking the Gryffindor child to the medical wing, and bullocks on anyone who asks.


End file.
